User talk:Purple Wrench

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Well, that's it. I no longer have patience for Chrome's awful font handling. All I ever needed was the ability to have the operating system (that is, any of them) take care of all the specifics of font drawing, but no. Chrome has an agenda to push, which seems to involve the exclusive use of anti-aliasing. That's especially obvious because practically all webfonts have abysmal support for aliased rendering. And that's not even touching upon the inconsistent font and UI sizes that Chrome seems to go back and forth on, both compared to the operating system and to its own past and future releases.
If Chrome wants me to look at a screen and not be able to tell by the font rendering if I'm on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android or a Linux distro, then so be it. Now everything looks unpleasantly smooth, but at least it's readable again.
But I can contain the ugliness! Thanks to Linux's almost insane level of support for customization, I can make Chrome the only program that looks like this. Firefox and everything else remain untouched.

In slightly related news (as in, also about text), @StrongBadActual has reached I-can't-keep-up-with-it levels of tweetstagramming.

(15 August 2016)

Continuing from yesterday, sometimes it's the little things that make all the difference.
For twenty-four hours, I thought the Two More Eggs end slate said "eggs with sauce".
Apparently, I was wrong.
Which makes me right previously.
Thank you Catjaz.

(15 August 2016)

Sometimes it's the little things that make all the difference.
All this time, I thought the Two More Eggs end slate said "extra sauce".
Apparently, I was wrong.

(31 December 2015)

So, now that all the episodes of Two More Eggs have aired, I'd like to theorize what Dooble's deal is.
Everyone seems to be comparing his speech patterns to Homsar. But really, he seems a lot closer to Senor Cardgage in what he says. Except less mumbly and depressing. Sure, his voice is... closer to Homsar, but in terms of his personality he's cut from the Cardgage cloth. Why? Because Homsar seems only slightly aware of his surroundings, and mostly talks about himself no matter what the situation. Senor Cardgage can act based on what is going on around him, and it's clear that he has a relatively solid grasp on the situation (at least compared to Homsar). Same deal with Dooble. There's a lot of characters in TV shows and the like that seem to be half in a conversation and half isolated from it, like if you removed the other person they would sound like they were just making observations rather than talking to themselves. Dooble, and the people who talk to him, often follow that pattern. But the couple of occasions where it feels like there really is focus in the conversation (eg, the scientists actually giving Dooble what he wants) reassure the audience that everyone is aware of Dooble's presence, and vice versa.
But there is one noticeable attribute Dooble possesses that reminds me of Homsar, and I don't think anyone has brought it up yet. It is what Strong Bad calls "powers of persuasion", but in a more supernatural sense. Dooble is a bit of a non-sequitur: as a character in general, but also in the situations to which he is added. Everything he says is at least slightly off, and at most very strange. Yet in roughly two sentences he is able to convince almost every character to side with him, do what he asks, follow him, or simply acknowledge his power. He convinces criminals to let him transport what we presume to be a body — and that it is a "good idea" — and then, upon being threatened with arrest and having the body bag compromised, appears inside as the body, prompting all of the policemen to dance along with him. This entire debacle could not possibly have cancelled out the charges, yet no arrest is made. More revealing is his appearance in the newsroom. Everyone is trying to get him off the set, but Dooble abruptly calls a cameraman by his name. The cameraman is taken aback, but Dooble asks him to turn the set lights off — and he does, forgetting that Dooble has no authority to do so. By the end of his song, and with no visible changes in their character or any sort of prompting on Dooble's part, the news anchors are suddenly singing along with him and rejoice when he solves the problem on which he was reporting. Even in his children's show appearance, he quickly convinces the characters that he is evil, and every decidedly neutral action he takes is cause for alarm. The moment he destroys the real villain, the characters all cheer for him. There is no hint of mistrust, no slow realization, not even an apology to Dooble for believing he was evil earlier. Perhaps there need not have been an apology, because Dooble knew he had convinced them simply by being present. He completely took over their minds.

Or maybe I'm just overthinking this a lot. Good thing I didn't ramble about what statement Trauncles seems to be making.

(23 November 2015)

For a short time in 2013, while Strong Bad was away preparing for w00tstock, Bubs once again seceded from Strong Badia. This time, however, he renamed his autonomous commonwealth C-Stand-Bubs.
Why did Conces5ionstantinople get the nix?
That's nobody's business but the Thnikk's.

(6 September 2015)

Perhaps you've taken a look at the Stinkoman 20X6 Enemies and Items page and wondered why the sprites look so... choppy, for lack of a better term. Or perhaps you haven't, and I just sound like Strong Sad all of a sudden. What's the matter, can't handle talking about nearest neighbor interpolation problems?
...But let's assume you do know what I'm talking about. (For an example of what I mean, look at shield.png before and after the new version I uploaded.)
The shield sprite was relatively simple to do because I just had to start level 9, print-screen, and do some quick editing. No split-second timing and no crazy gaming skills required. But what about the rest of the items and enemies? Trying to print-screen them all and manage a 1:1 pixel ratio would be a nightmare. So I did what any... um... me would do: I tried to extract the sprites from the Flash file automatically.
Here's the part I didn't see coming. None of the sprites are actually stored as images. They are all Flash polygons, and I assume this was done intentionally so that the sprites would never look blurry regardless of the user's Flash settings. That caused a problem for me, specifically because taking screenshots of the extracted polygons doesn't guarantee that they will be visible in-frame. Did I mention I'm only using free Linux software to do this?
So I tried writing scripts to fix this until I realized it certainly wasn't worth the time or effort. I might try this again at some point, because the wiki deserves better (and smaller) sprites. But it's not a huge concern anymore.

That said, I did find out that the bacon actually comes from an image of... many bacons.

(9 August 2015)

And so, on August 3rd, 2015, it was decided that Homestar should repeatedly make a face only a mother could love.

He obviously needs medical resistance.

(24 June 2015)

Booooooo... ka-chunk. *clears throat* 'Sup my young parsons. I too am so on the go,
that I can't feel my esophagus what is going on here?!? Why is there suddenly a pair of gallinaceous lagniappes where there once was a pair of murine aures?
Why do they choose to steal the Craig Benzine-ism for a video description?
Why must an entire demographic be unable to sample what may be a delightful product and instead be confined to the use of a single joke? ...And does that also exclude Coach Z?
*gasps* HOW CAN CGI LOOK SO DATED WON'T SOMEONE GIVE ME AN ANSWER...?

...well, I guess not. We won't know anything for at least another week. So I guess I'll just have to wait it out. Very, very forwards.

(21 April 2015)

As a fan of They Might Be Giants and Homestar Runner, it's always amazing to hear a TMBG song that reminds me of something The Brothers Chaps would make. I'm not talking about Experimental Film or Crystal Fortress, or any of the other collaborations they've done together; I'm talking about songs that just sound like they fit with Homestar Runner. Usually that happens when TMBG use the same Casio keyboards we all know and love. (Speaking of which, good to hear a new toon that brings back the Casio keyboards!)
Two examples I can think of are Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head, from 1985, and I'm Gettin' Sentimental Over You from circa 1987. The former uses a keyboard patch in the background that is also used as the Lappy 486's startup sound, and is heard when angry Bubs marches up to Homestar in Donut Unto Others. The latter uses drum patches that are very common on the site, specifically in Theme Song Video.
Fresh off TMBG's new album Glean which came out today, here is a third example: All The Lazy Boyfriends, which has the keyboard patch most famously used in flag day. A music video for the song was also coincidentally released today, and you can listen to it here.

(24 March 2015)

I would like to pay my respects to a brave soul whom we unfortunately lost yesterday. The bearer of good news shall no longer bring joy to those who listen.
Farewell, Store Front Page News. I'll always miss your excitement to usher in a new product; your silly, all-nonsense attitude; your bold headline and your regularly-typed body text...
Store Front Page News will be buried along with its kinsmen at homestarrunnerstore.com, to be replaced by a more simplistic store. Tee is in all of our hearts.

Store Front Page News

2002 - 2015

(8 March 2015)

DANCING ROBOTSDANCING ROBOTSDANCING ROBOTSDANCING ROBOTS

So I guess this is just normal now?
Alright then, now there are two roadblocks in the H*R universe: A wiki that suddenly slows to a halt sometimes with no explanation, and the security risks popping up in Flash on a frequent basis.

Adobe should just tape a piece of paper to all the Flash plugins that says "Everything is fine. Nothing is ruined.""Keep your pants on. For real."

Standing in the doorway is the Purple Wrench. The Wrench beckons you to step inside and converse. You feel hesitant, not knowing how to react to the liveliness of the household item. Behind you is a crowded street. To the right is a place you haven't gone yet.

The Wrench suddenly hones its ability to call upon soft focus filters and lens flares, and before you can perceive it a prophecy has been recalled to your memory. It states the following:

Ahem. Testing, one two three. I have a grave prediction regarding the Monster Safari movie, in that all signs point to its demise before a script is even realized. Yet, this is not an uneducated prediction. Earlier this year, a movie that had been anticipated since 2007 was deemed cancelled by its creator due to a lack of interest. I am obscurely referring to the Neverhood Movie, the brainchild of Doug TenNapel. His movie was to be created by a film-based spinoff of cartoon distributor Frederator. Such an obscure team as Chapman and Zobel, known only for an internet cartoon, seems almost doomed from the start when compared to the creator of Earthworm Jim and his unexpected failure. However, that does not signal the end of either effort. In the place of the movie, a CD of Neverhood-style music by the original composer has been announced. And, well, we just got a mackerel of a holiday toon! So Ron Planet, establish a base in comics in case you don't make it. And Monster Safari, don't expect it to be glutamate great just yet. But don't give up with what you already have... ave... ve... e...

The prophecy ends abruptly at this point. Gelatin, you think to yourself.

Now get back to work, I don't run a country club, you know? And what's with you being purple? I thought I told you to be red, or... blue, not a mix between the two. ColdReactive 19:31, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Y'know, I love a user with a user page right off the bat. I also love it when it's full of content and not just one sentence. Heck, it blows my user page outta the water. Does that mean I love you? No, that'd be creepy. Even though ColdReactive beat me to it, I'd just like to weclome you as well. Seeing your already-made sig page, and your nice user page, it seems like your already familiar with wikis. That my friend is jumbo/LARGE! Welcome to the Wiki, green Purple Wrench! StrongAwesome 19:49, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, it's been the work of several months and countless sandbox "previews". --■■ PURPLE WRENCH ■■ 20:04, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Hey there, Purple Wrench. Sorry, but interactive games like the one at the top of this page are not what talk pages are for. You might try the fanstuff wiki. Cheers! — It's dot com 21:43, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Dangit, Purple Wrench! I just wanted to remind you that according to our signature guidelines your signature must include a text version of your username which links to your user page. It also says that preferably a signature would include no more than one image (the personal image rule is more to not clutter signatures and user pages with random images than it is to keep the wiki itself clear). I'm afraid your current signature comprising several images and no actual text does not fit those requirements. Please correct this at your earliest convenience. All right, young lovers! Knock it off back there! — Defender1031*Talk 15:46, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Oh dear. I knew something was going to be improper about the sig, but I couldn't put my finger on it. And it looks like I couldn't even use highlighting to make the background of the text purple. Oh well. It was worth the hour of pixel-drawing and the two days it was up. Now I'll just eat another pony I guess.

Hey, Purple Wrench. You know this is a wiki, right? If you see content that we should be covering, please feel free to just add it. (Or if you're really not sure, at least bring it up on a more visible page than your user subpage.) Cheers. — It's dot com 18:02, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for hearing me out, It's dot com! Yes, I wasn't completely sure of the proper means of doing so, but I wanted to get the word out on the Wiki anyway. What was really confusing me was the fact that no one else on the wiki even acknowledged the existence of either Ocelot/Porridge Maiden, or Paul and Storm's new Brothers Chaps-animated holiday special — several days after both were announced. I was honestly expecting both to be documented and Main Page'd long before I saw them.

You're on the subreddit? I didn't notice! Catjaz63 23:22, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, that's because I'm a OTRNTW on the subreddit. An often-time-reader never-time-writer. I've been reading it ever since I realized that sometimes people post things there that should be on the Wiki. Like the Paul and Storm Holiday Special's existence. --■■ PURPLE WRENCH ■■ 23:29, 1 April 2015 (UTC) see, now I mutated back.

So, you're a lurker? Yeah, I'm a modm'n there and the community is really nice 'n stuff. By the way, what do you think of the virus? Catjaz63 00:07, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess I am. I haven't bought anything. The virus get-up is pretty sweet. I like the Web 1.0 gif background and the garbage around the text, although I have to say it's really distracting if I'm actually trying to read something.

And awesome, it looks like you got your sig working! I like the continuity with the one you have on reddit. Maybe it's just me, but the text color on the sig seems a bit hard to read on top of a white background. Just thought you might want to know. --■■ PURPLE WRENCH ■■ 00:51, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice and stuff! I changed my signature to a darker blue. - Catjaz63 01:23, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

No problem. It's much easier to read now. Don't worry, you'll get used to adding the sig at the end of your talk posts. Of course there's that button on the editing page to do it automatically, but it also adds two hennas hyphens, which seem to be going out of style in these parts. I personally use it anyway because there's less to think about. --■■ PURPLE WRENCH ■■ 01:58, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

hey dude, small trivial suggestion, but you should use something like tinyPNG to compress those files you're uploading. It's small, but every kilobyte is worth it i guess - Catjaz63 21:22, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

Good point, but I wanted to get them up as quickly as possible so I could add them to the thumbnails page. Actually it won't get much smaller unless we use JPGs. --■■ PURPLE WRENCH ■■ 21:24, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

I compressed one of the thumbnails and I got around a 66% smaller file size. It's pretty significant if you ask me. - Catjaz63 21:31, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

Catjaz63: that looks like a cool tool! I read through the page and I wanted to mention that that's a *lossy* compression algorithm. Many people may be shrinking their PNG files without knowing. PNG is preferred here because it is lossless and doesn't have the artifacts JPEG is notorious for. This algorithm may be better but is it devoid of artifacts? I'd like to know. --Stux 21:35, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

Catjaz: Huh. I guess GIMP doesn't do a great job automatically. If you want to compress them now, knock yourself out (but maybe don't use a lossy compression). If not, I'll compress them later. I'm still surprised none of them are larger than 200KB, it was estimating 2MB for one of them!

I'll go eat another pony-- ...oh, dear. It appears that command is specific to Windows. All I can eat is... umm... mints.

...I'll eat a bunch of mints in the shape of a pony.

Stux: I'm not going to use a lossy compression either way. Either I'll use GIMP or the PNGOUT plugin for IrfanView, or something else comparable. --■■ PURPLE WRENCH ■■ 21:40, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm a pretty idiotic guy in terms of technological terms, so I'm not exactly one for these "lossy" things. However, I'd personally lower quality of images for lower file sizes. The Wiki is already slow as it is.

P.S. What's wrong with Lossy optimization on Youtube206? The preview on the pages its on is small. Plus, 1.2mb is pretty huge for an image - Catjaz63 21:49, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

Catjaz63: Smaller file sizes may or may not improve wiki performance. Not all the issues are caused by bandwidth saturation. Rendering wiki pages can take time and burden the server's CPUs and/or I/O and tend to cause the most noticeable slowdowns. More horsepower and memory are needed but that is more expen$ive. The wiki was even slower a few months ago until some optimizations were enabled. That said 1.2MB for a single image is quite large (though Mediawiki will rescale the image for thumbnails and the like; only only download the full 1.2MB when you view the image itself on the image page). Which image was this?

There is nothing inherently wrong with lossy optimizations and they generally work fairly well on live images, but cartoon-like images with uniform colors and smooth lines can make any compression artifacts more noticeable and less aesthetically pleasing (in JPEG weird squares will appear and dark areas that are supposed to be "black" may show squares that aren't supposed to be there). I found this wiki article with some examples. From further reading TinyPNG's page their compression is different. It seems like they try to find like colors and combine them as one. Thus it won't have any JPEG artifacts but since there's still loss of data the image won't be exactly the same there may be other kinds of artifacts which is less than ideal. Generally speaking, we've preferred to present exact representations of content screenshots but, who knows, we may have tinyPNG compressed images and not know it.

Catjaz: (I typed this out while Stux edited the page, so I apologize if I repeat anything) The dimensions of the file (width and height) can be made smaller, and I might upload a new and sharper version of that image, but the problem with lossy PNG optimization is that you start to lose colors and end up with something that looks like a GIF file. If you look at some of my contributions you'll see that I have reuploaded some images because they had a loss of color. It's not always obvious but it is something to look for and fix, for the following reason:

Suppose something bizarre happens that causes all traces of Homestar Runner to suddenly vanish from the internet, but spares this site. If that were the case, "historians" would look for not only the most accurate information, but also the most accurate visual representations of homestarrunner.com. So it is in the best interest of a comprehensive knowledgebase like this one to provide accurate images where possible.

As for file size, yes, that is outlandish. But like I said, it doesn't have to be -- and you'll notice the other two images are JPGs for that reason.

And to clarify, the suggestion that images should be under 100KB was more relevant when 1) internet speeds were slower and 2) homestarrunner.com only operated in a small window of less than 600x600 pixels.

Stux: I actually installed it for a very specific and unrelated reason, was unable to use it for that reason, and so uninstalled it again. If I can't reduce the PNGs with another editor then I will try it again. --■■ PURPLE WRENCH ■■ 00:03, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Hmmm. Too bad it didn't help out. I've used the command line utilities before and found them very helpful. That was a while ago though. I did a quick internet search and found this guide that looks handy: http://optipng.sourceforge.net/pngtech/optipng.html Perhaps you might find some tools there to be of use. --Stux 00:08, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure I found the same guide you did, Stux. So, using OptiPNG, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that YouTube206.png has been replaced with an image that is clearer, smaller in pixel size, and half the file size without loss of quality. The bad news is, using that same technique, all of the thumbnails are virtually the same size. In total they lose about 100KB out of 1.8MB, which is not enough to change it. Since the server will automatically generate smaller versions of the images so they can be viewed on the thumbnail page, any reduction in size will not have a huge impact on the end user. --■■ PURPLE WRENCH ■■ 00:57, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

When do you plan to 'release' the new layout that you've been cooking in the sandbox? - Catjaz63 16:47, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

We are the only users who have really discussed rethinking the layout, and aside from a small edit by That'sBupkis, the only users who have worked on it. Thanks for your help, by the way.

But to the point, no one else has mentioned whether it's a good idea or not, especially not the users that really steer the direction of the wiki. I wanted to see what they think and that's why I put it in the sandbox. In addition, it also renders the Twitter templates useless and I'm sure a lot of work went into them. So once there is a clear indication that other users prefer the layout, then I can confidently release it. (I wasn't concerned about missing information or anything, although it might be a good idea to transcribe the images of Neglecto et al.) --■■ PURPLE WRENCH ■■ 21:46, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I'm finally here. What's the issue and what's being proposed? I'd like to understand what's going on so I can weigh in. — Defender1031*Talk 06:34, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Well, I never said sick, I just thought it would be better to allow a Twitter gallery where each post had enough room for a video transcript, even if it was unusually large. The one that's up there already looks nicer, it just isn't as informative. --■■ PURPLE WRENCH ■■ 00:29, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

I actually think the new one in the sandbox looks nicer since it fits to different resolutions better. (The current one looks pretty bad at certain resolutions when the boxes scale badly) - Catjaz63 00:33, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Everything above "Integration Idea" in the sandbox looks nicer to me. The current gallery on the actual page looks pretty terrible to me right now. — Defender1031*Talk 05:02, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Oh, that was just me dawdling around; I didn't polish it at all and it looks terrible, yeah. - Catjaz63 05:18, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Considering we do replies on the sandbox template, how are we going to do retweets on the template? - Catjaz63 11:48, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Maybe we should just provide a date and a link to the tweet with a very minimal description (if at all). Any other option would probably cause some confusion between tweets and retweets. --■■ PURPLE WRENCH ■■ 00:04, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

It technically is "Extra Sauce", due to there being, what I think, is a light emphasis on the "tuh" of extra, so it can sound like "ex ra sauce", which can be interpreted as "eggs with sauce". Also, there's no "whi" sound for it to be "eggs with". I even took the time to scavenge into WatchDisneyXD and the subtitles do indeed read "Extra Sauce!". - Catjaz63 23:58, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Serves me right for only spending half a second to check. It deserved a couple minutes at least! --■■ PURPLE WRENCH ■■ 22:47, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

The way that Strong Bad linked to the tweet was via a retweet + quoting the tweet. example - Catjaz63 20:31, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

It's not listed as a reply and it shows up on the main tweets page, so I'm not counting it as a reply. And it's worth documenting even if it is a retweet since he did comment on it. I will, however, revise the statement I made in the edit summary because it has happened before. But the only other example I could find was a tweet that was already deleted. --■■ PURPLE WRENCH ■■ 22:45, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

You don't like my "Stronger Things" joke? I worked hard on that joke! A whole 13 seconds! - Catjaz63 04:02, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Don't take it to heart, Catjaz. It was entirely circumstantial. I try not to add jokes to filenames unless they still describe the file adequately. And while Stranger Things is relevant to the image context, I didn't realize that until now because I've been around people talking about it incessantly for the past few weeks. Incessantly to the point that I wanted nothing to do with it... yet not detailed enough for me to figure out that it had anything to do with horror.

Also I totally didn't realize it was you --■■ PURPLE WRENCH ■■ 00:15, 28 October 2016 (UTC)